Sensor guided biped felling machine for steep terrain harvesting

This paper outlines the design of a novel teleoperated robotic system that is proposed for the felling process of Pinus Radiata on steep terrain. The system uses arboreal locomotion similar to that used by monkeys for the method of traversal between trees which has not been used in this manner previously. Machine vision for tree recognition and optimal path planning are used to maximize the efficiency in felling operations. Other research works have explored autonomous systems for pruning by enclosing the tree and scaling vertically, however these systems neither perform felling operations nor do they have the ability to traverse from tree to tree which our proposed solution is capable of. Existing mechanized approaches to felling are generally limited to flat terrain and are manually operated but due to the unique motion of this machine, it can traverse over many terrains impractical for traditional ground based felling systems.